Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are ready to help rebuild Syria and bring about a lasting “ceasefire” there, chief commander Mohammad Ali Jafari said, adding that disarming Lebanon’s Hezbollah is out of the question, state TV reported on Thursday.

Iran has played a pivotal role in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s campaign to crush rebel resistance in Aleppo and is now close to establishing a “Shi’ite crescent” of regional influence stretching from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean Sea.

Lebanon’s president asked Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri to form a new government on Thursday after he won the support of a majority of MPs and the endorsement of the influential parliament speaker.

Iran’s judiciary has issued verdicts for 20 people accused of storming Saudi diplomatic missions in January and will announce them in the near future, an official was quoted as saying by the judiciary news agency on Tuesday.

Iraq and Turkey on Wednesday were summoning their respective ambassadors in an increasingly acrimonious dispute between the two neighbours ahead of a planned operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from jihadists.

Iran accused Gulf Arab neighbors on Thursday of jeopardizing Lebanon’s stability by blacklisting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, state television said, a move likely to stoke tensions in the regional power rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh. The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council

TEL AVIV – A leading Muslim cleric and scholar who made headlines by claiming that gender equality is against Islam and women are only fit to deliver children is now hoping to spread his influence in the West with the construction of a new mosque in New Zealand.